Lost Lands: Dark Overlord (2015)

I was recently on vacation and, having no access to a computer, I ended up blazing through the Lost Lands games (1-10). This review will be on the series as a whole.

The oddly names developer Five-BN Games really makes some of the most high quality and unique Hidden Object Adventure games out there. All their games have a similar feel and are almost always of equally high quality. Everything from the cutscenes - which are by far the most professional of any HOPA developer - to the amazingly well crafted gameplay and artwork are just a blast to play. I do prefer the New York Mysteries series a little more since I really dislike fantasy settings, but I managed to have a ton of fun all the same.

There is just a lot to love about their games. One thing that is maybe an acquired taste but a huge plus for me is the backtracking. They do NOT mark active areas on the map, and you often will need to scour through previous areas to solve current puzzles. This presents an exploration challenge that really takes the genre from mind numbing to engagingly challenging for me.

On top of that, they have probably my favorite hidden object puzzles of any game in the genre. You rarely are just finding items from a list, but instead you search for silhouette-hint items that you then use in the scene to unlock other items. These self-contained sequential scenes are a real highlight.

And all of this is on top of the fact that these games are the least predatory games on iOS. The entire game is free, including the collectors edition bonus chapter - WITH NO ADS. The only optional pay structure is for hints. You get 5 free hints, but after that you can either pay for more or watch an ad. It’s incredibly generous, and actually makes it fun to solve things for yourself - you literally “make” money by doing so.

So ya, excellent series as always. Playing through the Legenedary Tales games now as well as their most recent Mystery Detective Adventure, and they’re all top notch. Definitely recommend ANY games by this developer.

i'm an absolute sucker for hidden object & puzzle games!!! after i played the 8th installment of this series that was offered for free on prime gaming (sand captivity) i knew i had to play all the other ones lol

i immediately noticed the writing/translation errors in this one weren't as bad as the 8th one somehow??? so that's good ig? also they reuse a lot of the puzzles in this first game in sand captivity, but i don't really mind that

it does get a bit annoying trying to remember where you saw that one thing at the start of the game that had a piece missing that you only just found 3 chapters later lol, but it's still fun and i enjoyed it

Overall a fun mix of point and click puzzly challenges. The animated story helps bring the experience together.

Unfortunately after playing for a while, it gets old. The challenge becomes remembering the obscure subarea where a certain object has an obscure action to perform. One ultimately needs to spend coins to get hinted to move forward.

Still I give it 4 stars for a solid effort, and the dynamic just wore me down eventually. Kudos for the the fine graphics and storyline progression, alas I'm not cut out for the repetitive pain of wading through the junkyard puzzling.